


Flowers

by MuseofWriting



Category: Elena of Avalor (Cartoon)
Genre: Flowers, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Gift Giving, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-19 12:03:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29999076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuseofWriting/pseuds/MuseofWriting
Summary: It starts with a mistake, and grows into something sweet.
Relationships: Mateo de Alva/Elena Castillo Flores/Gabriel "Gabe" Núñez/Naomi Turner
Kudos: 2





	Flowers

**Author's Note:**

> I imagine this fandom is fairly dead whoops but this was an old tumblr fic that I kinda liked and it reappeared in my notifications today. Since I've been reposting old one-shots to AO3 anyway, I figured I might as well add this one. Enjoy!

It started with the flowers, and a misunderstanding.

Mateo forgot a bouquet intended for his mother when he stopped briefly by Elena’s room to ask her a question about the scepter. Unfortunately, Elena didn’t notice them until later, and she mistakenly assumed that Gabe had left them for her because he’d been in the hallway outside her room right before she did. Then she went to Naomi for advice, but Naomi completely misinterpreted their conversation and thought that Elena was trying to give her flowers. By the time the whole thing got straightened out and they figured out what had actually happened, all four of them felt silly and more than a little embarrassed. To break the tension, and as a half-joking apology for having inadvertently kicked off the confusion, Mateo bought all of them small bouquets of light pink flowers and for a couple weeks there was a spray of color in each of their rooms, and Elena found pink petals clinging to her dresses.

That might’ve been the end of it, except that Gabe pointed out that it was hardly fair Mateo hadn’t gotten any flowers at all in this exchange, when it was hardly his fault all of them had leapt to conclusions. So as the last of the pink flowers were drooping and wilting, Mateo found himself with three different bouquets filling his room with soft sweet scent and a mother convinced he had a secret admirer.

Then, about a month after the initial incident it was Naomi’s birthday, and Elena felt bad about accidentally misleading her, and so Naomi found her room adorned in sprays of yellow and white, and during the party she had a blossom tucked behind her ear.

Then a week later, Gabe sprained his ankle, and was stuck sitting about for a few days, and sending get-well-soon flowers was just natural.

Then, one day, Naomi left a rose in Elena’s room just because, and it was sort of funny and sort of sweet. And then during magic training Elena accidentally overturned a flower bed and dug a few of the surviving flowers out of the exploded dirt, made a mock bouquet, and handed it to Mateo, laughing. And then Gabe found a wildflower that had stubbornly taken root on the edge of the royal guard’s training ground, and saved it from an inevitable trampling by plucking it up and gave it to Naomi. And then— it just sort of became their thing. At any given time there were half a dozen different flowers between their four rooms. They wore flowers in their hair, in their buttons, tucked behind their ears. Roses, dahlias, cockspur corals, orchids, lilies, it ceased to matter exactly what—anything was fair game. When they shook their clothes, petals fell out. They scattered colors and the smell of something sweet in their wake like they were deities of spring.

Inevitably, the questions came — who are those from? Who are you buying those for? You always have so many flowers these days, who’s sending them? Is he cute? Does she work in the palace?

They tried to explain.

“It’s sort of a joke,” Naomi told her parents.

“They’re from my friends, we’ve all been exchanging them,” Elena said to Esteban and Isa.

“It’s just a thing we do,” Mateo tried to insist to his mother.

“It just kind of started happening,” Gabe clarified to the other members of the guard. “It’s not romantic.”

“ _Is_ it romantic?” Gabe broached the topic awkwardly, fiddling with his hands without knowing where else to put them, far too aware of the cramped quarters of the boat and the fact that every time they hit a particularly large swell of a wave his knee knocked against Mateo’s.

“Do _you_ think it’s romantic?” Naomi asked, her voice edged with something uncharacteristically fluttery and nervous.

“Between all four of us?” Mateo said, worrying his lip. “Is that— what would that be?”

Elena held her scepter carefully across her knees, keeping her eyes fixed on the crystal, like it might hold answers. “Do you want it to be romantic?” she asked. The three others glanced at each other.

“I don’t know,” Naomi said.

“Maybe?” Mateo said.

“What would that mean?” Gabe asked. Elena’s fingers traced the setting of her scepter.

“Could it just mean this?” she asked eventually. “Maybe it’s just— the four of us, like this.” She looked up at them. “For now, at least.”

“I’d be okay with that,” Naomi said.

“Yeah,” Mateo said. “I still don’t know how to explain it to my mother. But this seems to— work, in a way.”

“Yeah,” Gabe agreed. “This— this works. Somehow. It works.”

Elena smiled, and tucked a flower behind his ear.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading :D Please leave a comment & kudos if you enjoyed!
> 
> Come find me:  
> tumblr: [@thatgirlonstage](https://thatgirlonstage.tumblr.com)  
> twitter: [@MuseofWriting](https://twitter.com/MuseofWriting)


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